Author Archives: eliwash

Today I’m writing a blog as a homage to some very special people I work with. Naseem, Yewande & Jon, this blog is for you guys ❤️ They’ve had shout-outs in my previous blogs, and our office bants inspired most of the topics. Although the bants has now had to go on line during theContinue reading “Naseem, Yewande & Jon”

My first post of the lockdown… we are living through some pretty surreal times in our little bubbles, connected by the internet. Surreal is an interesting word. It is a back-formation from surrealism, which comes from French surréalisme (sur- “beyond” + réalisme “realism”). And unlike many of the other words I’ve looked at, it has quite modern origins. Surréalisme wasContinue reading “Surreal”

I was watching an episode of ‘Death in Paradise’ this week. One of the characters used ‘overstand’ as a play on words for ‘understand’, and I thought – why is it understand? It seemed a bit counterintuitive to me – understand is a constructive word. It’s about interpreting information and perceiving meaning. But when theContinue reading “Understand”

Songs are a regular topic of conversation in the office. People tend to feel strongly about the songs they do and don’t like. Often there are complaints about what’s playing. At this time of year it’s the cheesy Christmas songs. We were having one of these conversations about the office playlist, and I thought: whatContinue reading “Song”

It’s nearly Christmas already, and Secret Santa has been a topic of conversation at work – we were discussing what would be the perfect present? Christian said he always asks for socks for Christmas but nobody gets them for him. LOL! When you’re a kid socks are the most disappointing present ever, but when youContinue reading “Socks”

Today we were making a client amend at work – the client had added the word NOISE, in caps. We changed it to noise, in lower case, and it started to look a bit odd, you know how words do when you look at them too hard. I thought, noise is a bit of a strangeContinue reading “Noise”

I was watching Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen at the weekend (yes, he is still going). He briefly mentioned the origin of the word sofa, and my ears pricked up. At the time I was lounging on a sofa, as no doubt were a significant number of people around the globe. Although they might call it a couchContinue reading “Sofa”

Today was hallowe’en, a day that now seems to be about eating sweets, or should I say candy. These days, sugar is a bit of a villain – but the word sugar itself is a well-used, unremarkable word, not much to write about. That made me realise I don’t actually know much about it, and IContinue reading “Sugar”

Also, bantz, banta, from banter. I feel I have come to the bants party a bit late. Not banter – I’ve been well aware of that and participating for over 30 years. Who doesn’t love a bit of office banter… and it’s an essential skill for self defence and social interaction at school. But IContinue reading “Bants”

The other day at work the leotard came up during some office bants (bants: may be the subject of a future blog). It feels a bit 80s now, nobody wears shiny leotards with leg warmers when they work out any more (or do they?). It struck me what a strange word it is. Not veryContinue reading “Leotard”